MAD in Trouble

In the past few years, I bought MAD subscriptions for my nephews and this year I thumbed through the Yearly Issue at a Barnes and Noble. The first thing I noticed was no subscription card. Then I found a feature called “Celebrity Piss.” Now, I thought, this wasn’t the MAD I once knew.

I wrote them asking if they were planning on publishing more features with foul language in the headlines but I never got an answer.

Today I was browsing The Daily Cartoonist, an industry website for and about cartoonists, and I read a story that said that starting with Issue #500 in April 2010, MAD was going from a monthly to a quarterly magazine. MAD Editor John Ficarra said, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we’ve decided to just publish those.”

5 Comments on “MAD in Trouble”

MAD, Cracked and Boys Life Magazine were staples of my upbringing. We had a fort in the rafters of my friends garage, and I recall thumbing through the classified ads for Sea Monkeys, joy buzzers, and Charles Atlas courses. We would marvel over the back cover of MAD and the genius of the hidden tri-fold image.

My upbringing was mainly MAD. Some of my favorite ads were the real submarine
for about $25 (you could get in it!) and the life size Frankenstein figures. The hidden tri-fold’s by Al Jaffee and I think that was usually the first thing I went to.

Times change. Apparently the young peaple today don’t relate to MAD. I don’t really know why. In fact, I thought it was timeless. I grew up on MAD, and miss the old stuff. I remember exactly when it went from a comic book to a ” magazine “!

The artists and writers have changed. It’s no longer the Mad we knew. So has the mentality of the audience, who don’t seem to like the feel of paper. Maybe it’s too much work to turn the pages or maybe it’s not interactive or social network-oriented. It’s sad to see Mad not out there every month.